Monday, April 19, 2010

Nocatee Challenge

I was lucky enough to race with FL Xtreme this weekend in the Nocatee Challenge, a great little 30 hour race with team-mates Darrell, Kim, and Wanda. Here is a quick rundown of our course with some maps to help out. I'm going to keep this brief, but if anyone wants to know how I attacked or found any control simply email me and I'll give details.

- The first leg was a bike - paddle - bike. I estimated it would take about 10 hours, so we decided to bike the Guana leg first, paddle, and then do the road bike back around A1A. We hit CP 21 first coming from the parking area to the southwest. 3 teams decided to do the loop this direction. After 21 we went to CP 16 (not on map) and did the bearings course. Kim had a magic compass and literally nailed every single one. We usually have each team member independently shoot the bearing, increasing our chance of finding them quickly, rather than having only the navigator shoot the bearings. The rest of the navigation was working backwards and hitting CP 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, and 9 in succession and making it to the boat TA in 4 hours after a relatively easy ride.

- The paddle leg was also easy, we nailed each control quickly, however I should have decided to do CP 6 (the one south of the boat ramp first). The tide was going out and the north section was dam controlled, while the south section was tidal. After getting all the north control, the tide was very low in the Tolomato and this necessitated a 200 yard portage through knee deep black muck to get to and from the boat ramp. We had muck to deal with on almost every control, though the funniest was when Darrell jumped out of the boat into waist deep muck to get a control. We were more careful about checking the solidity of the ground after that. A quick road ride with 3 control put us back at the TA and we quickly prepared for the next section of the race, a trek-paddle-trek-paddle-trek.



Back at the TA we took a quick photo and headed out to use the remaining daylight. We had some sandwiches waiting and I drank a Pepsi. it is amazing how something I don't normally drink (soda) can taste so good in the middle of a race. I quickly realized that the scale on the next map was off as we arrived at CP 23 at an amazing speed. I was hoping to make the trek between CP23 to CP24 in daylight to help with a direct route, but we lost light and had to use the road to the east of CP24 as a backstop and go around adding about 25 minutes to the trek. We hooked up with Nature Calls here and decided to finish the trek together. The only control to give us trouble on the trek was CP29 - it was described as being on a firebreak - as it turned out there were at least 6 firebreaks in 300 a meter range near the control location. We knew there were at least 6 as that is how many we searched.

We got to the boats around 12:30 PM and headed for CP31. I was not paying attention to the maps real well there and using only the aerial map completely overshot it. After some frustration I pulled out the USGS map noticed it was about 600 meters south of the light (which was flashing at me) - and we headed to it with now 3 teams (Eco-Choice, Nature Calls, and FL Xtreme. We started in towards CP 33, unfortunately the route from the south was completely clogged with grass. This time I pulled out the aerial (I had switched to USGS at CP31) and noted that the route from CP32 looked to be the best clear route - which it was. We spotted Team Punch Junkies coming out as we headed for CP33 and an orienteering loop (CP34-CP38). We made quick work out of the orienteering, no real problems with 3 teams together.  
The picked off CP32 quickly (the nearby light made it pretty easy). CP 39 was a real challenge - by now the tide was incredibly low and the small creek lacked water. We trekked the bed of the creek - we were pretty good at slogging through mud by now, and the control was in what could have been described as a junk yard. It was pretty funny slogging in a deep salt water marsh in the darkness - but we had a great group of racers.



We made it to the TA shortly after that and the sun just started to come out. It was a quick few miles back to the TA and the last bike section. The sun was now up, which was good as the first couple of bike controls would have been challenging in the dark. As it was only one control, CP48 gave us trouble. We had run back into Nature Calls and Eco-Choice at this location  again - so we all worked together to find it. The challenge was looking into a large group of trees in thick palmettos for a "Tree Cluster". After that we had one more control (CP39) which was easy and a 6 mile ride back to the TA. Easy stuff.  We got to see a lot of teams that were out on the sport course.

We got back to the TA - Punch Junkies and Appalachian were both in the TA and gave us a few words of encouragement as we headed out onto the last trek - the trek course from the sport course. Another hour of easy jogging/walking and we were done - woo hoo. 3rd place and a happy team.

I have a little bit of footage from the course (I'm  just getting used to my sport camera so bear with me) here is at least what it looks like in the day on an elite 30 hours race. 



Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Nadia Bloom Search

I spent a good bit of time this weekend and took off work Monday to help search for Nadia Bloom. It is almost impossible to describe how happy I was to hear she had been found safe Tuesday Morning. There is a lot on this story at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-nadia-bloom-missing-20100412,0,72482.story . James King, went out solo, and was able to essentially go straight towards her - an absolutely wonderful thing. Being involved in the search I had a great insight to what was going on, and believe that there are plenty of things that can be learned. I truly feel that this is important as we always need to learn and make notes of what was learned for the next search.

Here are some items that I noted - in my line of work all ideas are good ideas (I'm a professor so I analyze), some just better than others - so these should be taken as they are given as possible constructive ideas.

1. Local counties should keep a list of pre-approved search volunteers. This would allow them to be able to bring manpower to the scene of a search quickly. I say this as I saw the crews working incredibly hard - but I also saw that if they had more manpower they could have covered more ground. Because everyone was working so hard doing the job at hand - there was little time left over to bring in and coordinate a volunteer activity.

2. Explore all possibilities of what could have happened, however improbable. When I talked to some of the folks in charge I was convinced she was in area 13 (the heavy swamp) - I was told many times she would not have wandered into the swamp, but my gut told me that this is what happened. My theory was she took the trail leading west from the pond, got distracted, disoriented and ended up wandering into the swamp.

Here is a map of  what I thought had happened and what happened in the search. The rescue team leaders did listen to my logic and were prepared to search this area.


View Nadia Bloom Search in a larger map (click to see notes on icons)

3. Never give up hope. I guess this somehow goes without saying. But it also goes hand in hand with have faith.

4. You've got to go into the thick stuff. This is from my experience with quite a few searches. Every time the person was lost in the "thick stuff" - in the case of this one the thick stuff was REALLY think. This was some truly challenging swamp.

5. Also huge thanks to Jim King - sometimes the extraordinary efforts of a single individual make all the difference in the world. Never be afraid to be that individual.

6. One thing done very well was the "safety zone" - where the local PTA put out signs with a bottled water that said "Nadia We Love You Drink this and Stay Here" I requested one additional item - that they put whistles on the signs and add "Blow Whistle". For searching large areas of woods - this a really good idea to have these located in safe areas of the search zone.Here is one;




7. Also if you notice from these pictures the vast majority of the searchers were wearing camouflage. Come on people this is a search and rescue - the objective is to be seen, we should be wearing orange vests. I did note that many of the S&R teams DID have reflective blazers.


This is not meant as a criticism of the teams out there. What I saw was an incredibly dedicated group of people doing everything that they could do with what they had. The swamp in the area 13 is some of the toughest thickest anywhere - searching - I came across one big Water Moccasin nest, and quite a few gators (one big).

All love and good wishes to the wonderful Bloom family. I am so glad this had a happy ending and I want to make sure the next time this occurs it also has a happy ending.

Additionally Here is My Call to Action to people I know and Myself

- United States Orienteering Federation (USOF) - To Create a national list, easily accessible. of top orienteers (and adventure racers) that are willing to perform search and rescue as volunteers. These are the people I personally want looking.

- Currently the web site SearchAndRescue.com is parked as an advertising site. Take this domain (or another similar domain) and put up real information that can help the public in knowing what they can do in these types of situations. Best practices for searchers and helpers, setting up of safe zones, etc...

Friday, April 09, 2010

Central Florida Zoo - Ropes Course

The Central Florida Zoo is now much more than a zoo - they have a great set of ropes courses and zip lines. I took the morning off of work Wednesday during my kids Spring Break to check it out. We did not have time to qualify to do the big course (Rainforest) which we should be able to do next time - but we did do 2 courses; Upland 1 and Upland 2.  Each kids also brought a friend so these courses are kid tested and parent approved. I've done the zip lines at Florida Forever - and even though they are longer and more exciting, they aren't the full course that you get at the zoo with lots of challenges and games. The site is http://www.centralfloridazoo.org/zoomairadventurepark 

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Bumblebee Baseball

The kids are on spring break and there is no soccer game this week, so we spent a good part of the day playing one of the games from my childhood - bumblebee baseball. The game is simple - you try to whack the bumblebees that are constantly diving and trying to attack you with whatever implement of desctruction you choose. Here we are using canoe paddles - though this does work much better with tennis rackets. Ahhh! a nice relaxing day at home. (for those of you worried about the bees - I was planning to wipe them out with Orthene as they ruin the cedar on my house - but this is somehow more sporting...)